Or something like that. Sean Lennon and Greg Saunier dreamed up an improvisational project a couple years back and opened for a Plastic Ono Band/Deerhoof show in San Francisco. They call themselves Mystical Weapons (a reference to Alejandro Jodorowsky’s 1973 film Holy Mountain, not to the sword of Godric Gryffindor, as I sort of initially guessed).

For a while, Mystical Weapons played live shows based almost entirely on instant improvisation — they’d play along to animated films by Martha Colburn and bang out as much wacked-out explosion and crazy noise as they could. On January 15, they’re releasing their self-titled debut album via Chimera Music, and even though it’s not quite as aggressively off-the-wall as their previous work, it’s still a trip (through space, through a jungle filled with dinosaurs, through a city made of glass, wherever you want). They released “Mechanical Mammoth” as a free download over at Rolling Stone.

Dracula Lewis is the dude behind the great Hundebiss label, which has been responsible for some fantastically hypnotic and warped releases over the last few years by Aaron Dilloway, Hair Police, Angels in America, and él-g, to name a few, plus a VHS collection of video work by Hype Williams and the Rapture Adrenaline feature film by James Ferraro. Now the bloodsucking fiend himself wants a piece of the pie, having just signed with Berlin’s Souterrain Transmissions and preparing a prickly 12-inch EP of cold dub proceedings that are equal parts bounce, buzz, and BLURGHHH.

Permafrost is arriving on November 5 in limited physical quantities (first 100 on orange vinyl) and infinite digital copies, with a Robert Beatty-designed cover that visualizes the “gaseous spider web” quality of Dracula Lewis’ music. Listen to the title track below, and remember to pop that ass to keep warm this winter.

BOOOOOO, I’m a ghost. I was once a guy, but now I’m dead, so I’m a ghost. I left some unfinished business on Earth and here I am floating around. What kind of unfinished business? Eh, I don’t know, probably need to take revenge on whoever killed me. But I’ve been dead for, like, forever, so that guy’s probably dead, too. Tough break, but whatevs.

Since I’m floating around here, might as well talk about Cold Cave. Those dark, new-wave folks have a new track out with the very Cold Cave title “A Little Death to Laugh.” Listen to it via YouTube below, and if you’re so inclined, buy it on a 7-inch here. Only a limited quantity of those 7-inches are available through the web, the first 50 of which will be signed by Cold Cave themselves. If you can’t get one through there, you’ll have a chance to buy it on the band’s fall tour with Divine Fits, who, honestly, aren’t nearly spooky enough for these guys. Then again, they did cover a song by pre-Birthday Party group The Boys Next Door and that’s pretty spooky, so maybe that not-spooky talk was uncalled for.

Once the Divine Fits/Cold Cave tour ends, Cold Cave are heading to Los Angeles to record their follow-up to last year’s Cherish the Light Years (TMT Review). If all goes as planned, we should be seeing that record in early 2013. By the way, the touring version of Cold Cave now contains Hunter Burgan of AFI, London May of Samhain, and Cody Votolato of The Blood Brothers. That is the spookiest lineup of all time. You cannot argue against me on this, because I am a ghost.

A Little Death to Laugh tracklist:

A. A Little Death to Laugh
B1. Young Prisoner Dreams of Romance
B2. Tristen Corbière

Ah, Christmastime. Nothing makes hip, modern, post-religion, avant-rockin’ Logical positivists and the devout, spiritual, indie-folkin’ faithful feel mutually awkward like Jesus Christ The Redeemer’s annual goofy-as-fuck Madison Avenue birthday orgy. And no indie rock musician working today is short-circuiting under the terrible strain of being both of those kinds of people at the same time (and then documenting the smoldering, gooey aftermath on albums) than our man Sufjan. Fortunately for us, though, we get to clap and laugh and boo and cheer from the safety of the sidelines with a cup of rum-spiked hot chocolate while Stevens does enough weirding-out for all of us. And hey, isn’t that what saviors are for, anyway? Pass the Kahlua, hot cousin!

So yeah, just in time for the sadgasm of 2012’s holiday season, here come volumes 6-10 of Stevens’ Songs for Christmas series, entitled Silver and Gold: Songs for Christmas. In accordance with Pitchfork, this new yuletide offering consists of five EPs and will feature guest appearances from The National’s Aaron and Bryce Dessner, Arcade Fire’s Richard Reed “Not Win Butler” Perry, Raymond Raposa of Castanets, and several others. It’ll be available both physically (as a CD box set) and digitally on November 13 via Asthmatic Kitty and will also see release as a vinyl box set “some time later this year or early 2013.” Being that its release approaches an annual stuff-getting holiday, the physical versions of the box will come with all sorts of whacky incentives, such as “stickers, temporary tattoos, a holiday ornament, an ‘apocalyptic’ poster, lyric sheets and chord charts, and music for playing along, ‘hallucinogenic photographs and psychedelic graphic design’ by Sufjan himself, and liner notes.” The vinyl also comes with its own crazy-balls coloring book (a page from which you can check out here) because who hasn’t imagined what Santa Claus looks like with fewer clothes on?

The whole tracklist and whatnot is viewable over on Stevens’ Bandcamp page, and you can also snag the set’s closing track there, “Christmas Unicorn,” for free. You know, it goes down pretty good with all this Kahlua!

Quick! If there’s two struggling, minor-player celebrities out there who could both use a serious boost to their public profiles and would therefore be savvy to pool their totally like-minded creative visions and unfortunately limited PR resources to the mutual benefit of both of their criminally under-examined careers, who would they be?

Exactly! Lady Gaga and Tony Bennett.

I know, I know; you’ve probably never heard of either of those artists, but trust me when I tell you (based on my research as a music journalist) that these are two hungry crooners that both have something to prove, and this collaborative album thing that FACT reported on earlier is sure to go a long way in busting their audience bases wide open. All they gotta do is think of a genre that everyone likes and takes seriously… hmm… HMM………… Eureka! Fuckin’ JAZZ. Everyone likes that shit. This is gonna go over like gangbusters, I can feel it. What a good use of everyone’s time, talent, energy, focus, and resources! Recently, I met up with one of the struggling singers, Mr. Bennett, outside of his Clarion in Windsor to get some serious HARD FACTS about the situation.

Hey, why don’t you explain the auspicious details of how such a potent stick of creative dynamite was born, Tony Bennett?

“Of all things, she called me from New Zealand and said, ‘I want to do a jazz album with you.’ And I said, ‘You got it!’ So that’s one of the things we’re gonna do.”

I can’t mention the composer because I don’t want anybody to do it before we do it, but there’s a great composer that’s very underrated, very famous, but not as famous as Gershwin or Porter. But he did as many hit songs as anybody, and so we’re gonna do a big swinging album.